Chapter Thirty-Six

The back room of the Charles LeVeau House of Voodoo (Est. 1997) feels a lot less restrictive than it did the last time I was here. It doesn’t take me long to figure out why: all of the accoutrements of the psychic trade are no longer in place. The heavy burgundy drapes are still there, sure, but the low lamplight that made everything feel vague and ethereal is turned off. In its place is a harsh white bulb that makes the room look like nothing more or less than what it is: a closet, in the back room of a junk shop.

Chuck takes a seat across from me.

‘Love what you’ve done with the place,’ I say.

Chuck shrugs. ‘I try and keep the showmanship to a minimum when I’m not with a client. Keeps things simpler.’

Makes it easier to pull the wool over their eyes if they can’t see you properly, you mean.

‘And where’s the crystal ball?’

He smiles. ‘I sent it in for a tune up. I could only get the basic cable package on it. Total rip off.’ He pauses. ‘It’s under the table. I don’t just leave it out between sessions, you know. That thing cost a damn fortune.’

‘I hear The Other Side can be real con artists.’

‘Sure. I guess you could say they really saw me coming.’

‘You think this is funny, don’t you?’

He shrugs. ‘A little.’

I feel my cheeks grow hot. ‘Listen to me, you arrogant son of a–’

‘Look, honey… save it, OK? Everything you’re going to tell me, I’ve heard it a thousand times before. If you want your money back, no refunds. If you want to threaten to sue me, go ahead: you wouldn’t be the first, and I’ve got a lawyer on retainer. If you want to yell and scream, sure, go ahead and get it out of your system… just let me know when you’re done so I can show you to the door. Deal?’

It’s the calmness that annoys me more than anything else. How can he be so damn complacent when he’s out there deceiving people for money? Tricking innocent strangers? Ruining lives?

‘You’re a conman,’ I say. ‘You’re a conman and you should be ashamed of yourself.’

He shakes his head. ‘Nope.’

‘No?’

‘No. I have absolutely no reason to be ashamed of myself – and I think you know that. But sure, I’ll level with you. All this? It’s not real. It’s just a magic show. You’ve busted me. Smoke and mirrors, that’s all.’

‘It’s a con trick.’

‘If you like. I like to think of it as more of a performance piece.’

‘Oh, it’s definitely a performance. I’ll give you that much.’

‘And what’s wrong with that? No one gives David Copperfield shit for not actually making the Statue of Liberty disappear. Newsflash,’ he says, leaning in close across the table, as if sharing a secret. ‘That’s not real magic either.’

‘David Copperfield doesn’t try and convince people their dead husbands are talking to them,’ I bristle.

He frowns. ‘Hey now,’ he says. ‘That’s not fair. I don’t go in for any of that shit. I’m strictly about the tourist trade – I’m about giving people a good time, that’s all. You pay your money, you get your fun. Nothing more or less noble than that.’ He puffs out his chest in a weird display of… what? Pride, maybe? ‘I’ll have you know I’ve been running this gig for twenty-something years, and I’ve never taken a single red cent from someone if I thought they were worse off after hearing what I had to say. You included.’

‘Well, that’s horseshit,’ I say. ‘And you know it. Lauren is going to be gutted when she finds out she’s still not going to be able to have kids. The doctors told her–’

He raises a hand to stop me mid-flow. ‘Oh, spare me the theatrics,’ he says. ‘You’re not here about your friend. You’re not angry about the fact that I told her she’d get knocked up, or you would have given me that little speech three days ago. So the only question is, why are you here?’ He points down to the ring on my finger. ‘My guess is, whatever boy you were with finally made good. You two patched it up, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, you’re welcome.’ He spreads his hands. ‘Another excellent prediction from Chuck LeVeau, Psychic Extraordinaire. Reasonable rates. Tell your friends.’

I grit my teeth. ‘That’s not what you said. You told me I wasn’t supposed to end up with Carter.’

‘Who?’

I lift my hand and point to the engagement ring. ‘Carter! My fiancé!’

‘As I recall, he wasn’t your fiancé at the time.’

‘Well, we got back together.’

‘You happy with that?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You seem it.’ He points to my forehead. ‘I never seen a forehead so creased in all my life. Looks like you’re about to start farming potatoes. But sure, if you say you’re happy…’

‘I am.’

‘Who am I to judge?’ He pauses. ‘Then what’s the problem? Fake Psychic Wrong About Everything isn’t much of a headline. Unless you came here for some other reason?’

It was a lot easier to be outraged on Lauren’s behalf, somehow; it felt simpler to be the pitbull, keeping her safe from harm, than it did to stand up for myself. If I say it to Chuck the Psychic – if I admit that there’s a problem with Carter – then suddenly it becomes real. They’re not just idle doubts, floating around my head. They’re a genuine concern. A problem. Something that needs to be worked through, dissected and analysed like a frog in a biology lab.

It means admitting that maybe, just maybe, Chuck the Psychic was right after all. That his wild stab in the dark hit the target. That whatever signals I was sending out into the world, this stranger – this charlatan – had managed to pick up on them.

‘Honey?’ he says. ‘You OK?’

I nod, and bite the inside of my cheek; if I don’t, I’m pretty sure it’s all going to come spilling out of me one way or another, and I’m not ready for that. That’s not Part Of The Plan.

The plan, the plan… always with the goddamn plan.

‘There was another guy, I guess? Not your Carter fella?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Well, sort of.’

Chuck LeVeau grins. ‘Well there either was or there wasn’t, honey,’ he says. ‘But it don’t matter. You wouldn’t be the first girl to come to New Orleans and hook up with someone she wasn’t supposed to. Laissez les bon temps rouler, am I right? It all seemed to work out in the end.’

‘That’s not…’ I hiss. ‘That’s not what happened. I didn’t hook up with him, and it’s not that I wasn’t supposed to.’

‘Your fiancé might have seen that a mite differently.’

‘We’d broken up.’

‘And this new guy was just the balm you needed? Take the ache away?’

‘No,’ I say – practically sneer. ‘For God’s sake, it wasn’t like that at all. It’s just that Jack was nice, that’s all. He was fun, and he was smart, and for a minute or two I was even able to convince myself he actually cared about me. That even though I was a complete stranger, that whatever connection we had was real, and not just…’ Not just a fling. Not just a silly throwaway screw. That it meant something.

‘But it didn’t? To you, I mean.’

‘Of course it did.’

‘And that’s a weird feeling for you, is it? To be with a guy who genuinely seems to care about you?’

‘I…’

‘Because it seems to me that that’s more of a novelty than it should be. And no amount of diamond is going to make up for that.’ He pauses. ‘As for whether or not you should have slept with some other guy… well, if you want moral absolution, you need to go see a priest. It’s a damn sight cheaper, if nothing else. You said you were broken up. As far as your boy was concerned, you were broken up. Why shouldn’t you have a little fun? Why shouldn’t you move on? Seems like it’s been building for a while.’

I don’t say anything to that.

‘Look,’ he says. ‘This new guy. Right or wrong, good or bad. Love of your life or a one night stand, it don’t matter. That’s a thing you’ve got to figure out for yourself. You gotta draw your own line in the sand on this one.’ He pauses. ‘Where’s the new boy, anyway?’

I shrug. ‘Who knows?’

‘He took off, huh? Little bit of a hit-and-run sort of deal? Well, that’ll happen. I blame Tinder, personally.’

‘Nah. It’s not his fault. I blew it.’

‘Well, that sucks,’ he says simply.

‘Is that it? Well, that sucks?’

‘All I’ve got.’

‘I thought you were in the business of telling people what they want to hear?’

‘Sometimes. Sometimes it’s what they need to hear.’

‘And the rest of the time you just make it up, eh?’

‘On occasion, I might have been known to… spin a little tale, let’s say.’

‘Is that what you did with Lauren?’

‘Who?’

‘My friend. The one you said would get pregnant. You told her what she wanted to hear?’

He pauses, then shakes his head. ‘Nope,’ he says. ‘With your other friends, sure. The blonde girl, I told her a guy at work had a crush on her and gave her some lotto numbers I pulled out of my ass. The little one and the Chinese girl… I don’t remember, but the bride? Nah. I just got a feeling, that’s all. Sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong. If it turns out to be true, great. If not… well, she’ll get along OK. She seems pretty happy with her man. She was beaming long before I told her anything about having kids.’

‘And what about with me?’ I ask. ‘Did you just tell me what I wanted to hear?’

He shrugs. ‘Who knows? I’m just a sham psychic, remember? You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you straight.’

‘I might.’

Chuck LeVeau pauses. ‘I don’t normally do this,’ he says, before reaching into his jeans and pulling out a faded leather wallet. He pulls out a pair of bills, and when I follow his hand to the table, twin Jacksons stare back at me.

‘Here you go,’ he says. ‘Your forty bucks. But I’m going to make you a deal. You can take it, right now, and walk out of here. I don’t want you to feel like you got ripped off. Or you can get some advice from me, on the level. No psychic fluff. No message from the other side. Not what you want to hear, but maybe what you need to hear. Just ol’ Chuck LeVeau. Your call.’

You’ve been holding onto things too strongly. Too tight. You’re smothering it. You want to control everything, and perhaps that even worked out for a while – but I think maybe you’re learning that it doesn’t work for long. A lot of smart people have tried. Smarter even than you, I think. Never works out in the end. The Other Side has its own plans.

And in that moment, I wish I believed – I really, really do. I wish that Chuck LeVeau could pull the answer to all of my problems out of the ether, that the ghosts of loved ones past could guide me to making the right decision. I wish that it didn’t feel so much like a gamble, or a stab in the dark.

And suddenly, I realise why people go to people like Chuck the Psychic. It’s not because they believe in the spirits; it’s because they don’t believe in themselves. Because they’re looking for any way to justify the things that they already know, deep down, are true.

You ain’t trusting your intuition as much as you should. Everything’s up in the air for you at the moment. You’re a woman without a plan. You don’t know where to start to pick up the pieces.

‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘Please.’

‘I thought you’d say that,’ he says. ‘So here goes. Forty bucks’ worth of advice.’ He clears his throat. ‘You’re asking the wrong questions. It doesn’t matter none about this new boy, or the old boy, or whatever. Whichever one of them put that ring on your finger, you ain’t happy with him – and you ain’t happy with him because you ain’t happy with you. My guess is, you been stuck in a rut for a little too long, and you’ve got yourself real comfortable down there. But now it’s time for a change. On your terms. No one else’s.’

He sits back in his chair. His work is done.

‘Of course,’ he says, picking his teeth, ‘that just my opinion. Like you said – what do I know, eh?’ He gestures down to the two bills. ‘That’s all I’ve got. Worth the money?’

‘Keep it,’ I say. I can’t tell whether he’s earned it or not, but I don’t want that money back. It feels… dirty, now. Tainted. Like taking money out of a church donation plate.

‘Mighty obliged, cherie,’ he says, picking up the bills with an almost supernatural speed. ‘Now if you don’t mine, I’ve got a four o’clock. Think you can look blown away by my psychic talents on your way out?’

‘Don’t push it.’

He grins as he shows me to the door. ‘Worth a try. You look after yourself, you hear? You seem like a good kid.’

‘I’m twenty-eight.’

‘And I’m fifty-seven, and you’re asking me for advice. You’re all kids from where I’m sitting. There are worse things to be.’

In that at least, he’s not wrong.

‘One more thing,’ he says as he ushers me out into the light of the street. ‘If you’re sticking around, you might want to consider actually enjoying yourself. See a little of what New Orleans has to offer, you know?’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

He shrugs. ‘Eat some food. Drink some wine. Go to the park and listen to them play on the bandstand. Take a little while to relax. Have yourself an actual vacation for a change.’ He grins. ‘Because honey, you could use one. I’ve never seen a body wound so tight before. You’re like a bedspring waiting to bust loose.’

‘I might just do that,’ I say. ‘Know of anywhere good?’

‘Are you kidding?’ he replies as he closes the door. ‘This is New Orleans. You can find a spot like that on any street corner. Just follow the music.’